Going straight to the top

After The Line of Beauty, the fast-rising Hayley Atwell has become Woody Allens latest muse. By Peter Whittle

It must be awful being Ewan McGregor. You have to work with these iconic directors such as Woody Allen.

You get paid for it. And you have to do love scenes with Hayley Atwell.

That name rings few bells at the moment, although the almost ridiculously beautiful face will be familiar if you were one of the millions addicted to The Line of Beauty, this year’s big BBC drama about life and gay times in Thatcher’s Britain. Virtually straight out of drama school and then only 23, Atwell played Catherine Fedden, the psychologically disturbed daughter of a rich Tory politician, the only chink of darkness in an otherwise perfect vision of 1980s affluence and wealth. Other than an advertisement for Pringles and a tiny part in a drama about Charles and Camilla that ended up on the cutting-room floor, it was her first television job. Critics sat up and took